John Ashbery, Timothy Donnelly, Adam Fitzgerald and Robert Polito

Three generations of poets come together to trace the arc of modernism in poetry.

Each illustrious in his own right, Ashbery, Donnelly, and Fitzgerald join together for an evening of conversation and contemplation about poetry. The three generations of poets discuss their works and share ideas in a conversation moderated by Poetry Foundation President Robert Polito to celebrate the publication of Fitzgerald's book of poems, The Late Parade.

John Ashbery has earned degrees from Harvard and Columbia, and went to France as a Fulbright Scholar through 1965. His many collections of poetry include Quick Question (2012), Planisphere (2009) and Notes from the Air: Selected Later Poems (2007), which was awarded the 2008 International Griffin Poetry Prize. Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror (1975) won the three major American prizes — the Pulitzer, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award — and an early book, Some Trees (1956), was selected by W.H. Auden for the Yale Younger Poets Series. Active in various areas of the arts throughout his career, he has served as executive editor of Art News and as art critic for New York Magazine and Newsweek; he exhibits his collages at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery (New York). He has received two Guggenheim Fellowships and was a MacArthur Fellow from 1985 to 1990; most recently, he received the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from the National Book Foundation (2011) and a National Humanities Medal, presented by President Obama at the White House (2012). His work has been translated into more than twenty-five languages.

Timothy Donnelly is the author of Twenty-seven Props for a Production of Eine Lebenszeit (Grove, 2003) and The Cloud Corporation (Wave, 2010), winner of the 2012 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. With John Ashbery and Geoffrey G. O'Brien he is the co-author of Three Poets published by Minus A Press late last year. His poems have appeared such magazines as A Public Space, Fence, Harper's, Harvard Review, The Nation, The New Republic, and The Paris Review, among others. He is a recipient of The Paris Review's Bernard F. Conners Prize and fellowships from the New York State Writers Institute and the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. He is the poetry editor of Boston Review and teaches in the Writing Program at Columbia University's School of the Arts.

Adam Fitzgerald is a New York City based poet. He is founding editor of the poetry journal Maggy, and the small artisan press Monk Books. In 2007, he completed a Masters while editing two unpublished essays of John Ashbery at Boston University's Editorial Institute. In 2010, he received his MFA from Columbia University's School of the Arts in poetry. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Boston Review, Fortnight Journal, Fence, BOMB, The Brooklyn Rail and elsewhere. His poetry reviews and interviews have appeared widely, featuring extended conversations about craft and poetics with Bernadette Mayer (Poetry), Harold Bloom, John Ashbery (Boston Review), James Tate (The Believer), Maureen McLane, Charles Bernstein, Richard Sieburth and Jonathan Galassi (The Brooklyn Rail). He teaches literature and creative writing at Rutgers University and The New School. He lives within a book-cramped studio in the East Village.

Robert Polito is the President of the Poetry Foundation. His many books include the poetry collections Hollywood & God and Doubles, as well as A Reader's Guide to James Merrill's 'The Changing Light at Sandover' and Savage Art: A Biography of Jim Thompson, which received the National Book Critics Circle Award in biography. He was the founding Director of the graduate writing program at the New School.